484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



were much the same over Syria-Palestine; and the coastal towns in 

 particular, what with the similarity of their occupations and interests, 

 had developed occasional cooperation — at times perhaps approaching 

 a trade guild of the great commercial towns. Though it was far to 

 the north, Ugarit must have had considerable contact with the 

 Phoenician cities. 



Its cultural and commercial contact with Mesopotamia must go 

 back to earliest times, witness the objects of Mcsopotamian origin 

 and the use of cuneiform writing. The continued contact may be 

 gathered from a letter (c. 1300 B. C.) of an Assyrian, Belubur, to 

 Tlshar in Ugarit, informing him of a document he was sending to be 

 read to the Queen of Ugarit. 



With Egypt, Ugarit had commercial and political relations, at least 

 from the beginning of the second millennium, though these can hardly 

 be compared with the close relations between Byblos and Egypt. 



The M3^ceuaean contacts, which became so promuient later, began 

 with small trade between Ugarit and Salamis in Cyprus, in about the 

 seventeenth century. At that time the pottery in Salamis, as shown 

 by the Enkomi excavation, was almost entirely Syrian. During the 

 fifteenth-fourteenth centuries Salamis had both Cyprian and Syrian 

 pottery; this is the period when Ugarit had a great deal of Cyprian 

 pottery, and perhaps the beginning of a Cyprian population at its 

 port. In the end of the fourteenth century and during the thirteenth, 

 Salamis had only Cyprian and generally Mycenaean i)ottery; at this 

 time Mycenaean objects and tombs were paramount in Ugarit, and 

 Mycenaean ware is f(nmd elsewhere in Syria. The Peoples of the Sea 

 who took Ugarit also cut off Mycenaean trade in general; it was only 

 after that break that the Phoenicians resumed this trade \vith the 

 Greeks who inherited the Mycenaean area. Memories of this early 

 contact between the Aegean world and Syria came down to the Greeks 

 in the form of legends sucli as that of Cadmos of Thebes who lived 

 long in Phoenicia, and upon his return brought the alphabet, the 

 "Cadmaean letters." More significant for the early period, and 

 especially for Ugarit, is the legend told by the Byzantine Malalas 

 about the marriage of Kasos (eponym of Mount Casius) with Kitia 

 (eponym of the Cj^prian city Citium) daughter of Salaminos (the 

 city Salamis) of Cyprus; after their marriage they colonized the 

 region of Mount Casius (just north of Ugarit) with Cj'prians and 

 Cretans. The inference of such legends is that it was Aegean traders 

 who brought Phoenician culture home after visiting Syria, rather than 

 Phoenician traders who visited the Aegean and taught it their culture ; 

 however, legends are often guilty of projection into the past, and we 

 cannot be sure as yet of the actual course of contact between the two 

 cultures. 



